Day 5

Smart Objects, Filters, and RAW

Objective:

General:

  • Further implements methods of non-destructive editing
  • Uses better photography practices

Specific:

  • Understands what a smart object is
  • Knows when to convert a layer to a smart object and when to rasterize a layer
  • Applies blur, sharpen, and liquify filters
  • Understands the importance of shooting in RAW and how to work with RAW photos

Smart Objects

  • Explain Smart Objects
  • This might be a good time to bring up raster vs. vector again. Smart Objects are Photoshop’s compensation for being a raster-based program.
  • Convert a layer to a smart object by right clicking on the layer in the layers panel. 
  • Use the Smart Object Resizing activity to show how Smart Objects work differently than raster objects
    • Smart Objects retain the info of the original layer. Raster layers don’t.
    • Among other things, Smart Objects allow you to resize an image without losing quality 
  • Editing pixels in Photoshop is inherently destructive and can’t be done on a smart object. To rasterize a smart object, right click on it in the layers panel.
  • Go over how filters differ in Photoshop from filters on other photo editing apps (Instagram, specifically)
    • Filters on Instagram deal mostly with adjusting the color, brightness, saturation, etc. of your photo. They work more like Adjustment Layers would in Photoshop.
    • Filters in Photoshop work more like “special effects” on your photo. You can do things like warp or blur your photo with filters.
  • Applying a filter to a smart object is non-destructive. Applying a filter to a rasterized object is destructive.
    • You can demonstrate this using the Smart Object–Bill Murray.psd file. Show how there has been a filter applied to both the raster layer and smart object layer, but you are only able to toggle/edit the filter on the smart object layer.
  •  Sharpen
  • Blur
  • Liquify
    • Use the picture of the family in the class files for Day 3 or Google an image of your favorite (or least favorite) celebrity
        • Use the tools on the left-hand side in Liquify
          • Bloat, pucker, forward warp, freeze, thaw, twirl, push left, etc
        • Play with Face-Aware Liquify (on the right)

RAW

  • What/Why RAW?? <–click here if you don’t know
  • How to shoot RAW (in the image quality settings of any DSLR)
  • Camera Raw Filter
    • This is where raw images are initially processed
    • Go through the various settings and process a raw image
  • Show how to import a raw image as a Smart Object 
    • Click on file link at bottom (where it says Adobe RGB…) and select Open in Photoshop as Smart Objects
    • Double click on thumbnail to go back to RAW editing screen
  • Note: You can demonstrate RAW using the RAW Puppy.NEF file, but explain that the .NEF file format is unique to Nikon cameras. Each camera has its own unique file extension for shooting in raw (for example, Canon’s is .CRW)

Conclusion

  • Recap
    • We learned how to sharpen images and blur images.
    • We learned how to manipulate photos with Liquify
    • We learned about RAW and why we should always shoot in RAW
  • Next time
    • Non-photo based creations
    • Making posters, flyers, cards
    • Brushes, text, shapes, basic digital art

Example Hook

Show the before and after of a picture altered with filters. Explain that filters are quick, easy, and non-destructive (the above image took 10 minutes to edit). Just for reference, the image above used an Iris Blur filter and the Neural Filters that are new to Photoshop 2021.

Example Questions

Have you ever used filters in a different program (i.e. Instagram)? What did you use them for?

Why might you want to blur something in a photograph?

Does anyone know what RAW files are, and why they are important?